Tag: tech

• John Maeda’s #DesignInTech Report from SXSW

  One of the most interesting talks that I attended while I was in graduate school at Penn was by John Maeda. 

  John operates at the intersection of design, technology, and business, and I find his work fascinating. He’s probably best described as a graphic designer, visual artist, computer scientist, academic, and author. And when I heard him speak in 2008, he was also President of the Rhode Island School of Design.

  More recently though, John has entered the world of venture capital by becoming a “Design Partner” at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) in Silicon Valley. But what’s really interesting about this move is that when he joined KPCB in January 2014, he was the first designer to arrive on Silicon Valley’s legendary Sand Hill Road. No other VC firm had a designer in-house.

  And that’s because design hasn’t, at least historically, been considered that important. In fact, in some cases it was seen as being detrimental. Brian Chesky – cofounder of Airbnb – has gone on record saying that when they were first starting out, Silicon Valley didn’t think that a bunch of designers from RISD could build and run a company. Boy were they wrong.

  So that’s changing. As of this month (March 2015), there are now 6 other designers on Sand Hill Road. The venture capital community has seemingly woken up to the value of great design.

  John Maeda has branded this shift, #DesignInTech. And he recently gave a presentation on the topic at SXSW. It’s a great read, particularly if you’re somebody who cares about design. Click here if you can’t see it below.

  //www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/kleinerperkins/design-in-tech-report-2015

  Design in Tech Report 2015 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

  2015.03.22

• Why brick-and-mortar stores should be scared of same hour delivery

  Venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote a post on his blog today called, Same Day/Same Hour Delivery.

  The post is about why he believes that Walmart could get the “most disrupted by the Internet.” And it has to do with the rapid rise of same day and even same hour delivery from ecommerce companies. If you can order it online and receive it within an hour, why bother going to a brick-and-mortar store?

  His post reminded me of one I wrote towards the end of last year called, The threat to big box retailing. But since Fred is in the business of making bets on technology companies and he has accumulated a significant amount of wealth doing that, I thought you might like to also hear it from him.

  2015.03.19

• Are we becoming more or less entrepreneurial?

  Aaron M. Renn of The Urbanophile, recently wrote an interesting article in Governing called, Where’s America’s Entrepreneurial Economy? In it, he argues that despite the fact that there’s a perception that entrepreneurship is on the rise, overall rates are actually declining.

  The Brookings Institution found that so-called “firm entry rates” have declined since the 1970s and that they suffered a steep fall post-2005. And though millennials are often seen as an entrepreneurial generation, The Wall Street Journal reports that business ownership among those under the age of 30 recently hit a 24-year low. Self-employment has seen a similar downward trend. A study by Economic Modeling Specialists International found that both the total number of self-employed and their share of jobs have fallen since 2006.

  His argument is that outside of tech — where yes, the barriers to entry have fallen significantly over the years — it has actually become harder to start a company in a lot of other cases. And he specifically mentions two industries where he believes that is very much the case: construction and real estate.

  Why is that?

  Well, he cites a number of possible factors, one of which is increased licensing requirements for many industries. But the two most interesting for me are slow disruption cycles and the presence of large dominant firms.

  Real estate has both of those. 

  It’s also a capital intensive industry. And it’s becoming harder for smaller private players to compete with larger institutions and pension funds who struggle with “moving the investment needle”, not with access to capital. Real estate is no longer the fringe asset class it once was.

  In contrast, you have the tech space with fast disruption cycles and low barriers to entry. Yes, you also have large dominant players (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and so on), but even they don’t have complete immunity in an environment where new ideas frequently trump access to capital.

  A culture of entrepreneurship across all industries is important for our society. I hope we never lose that.

  2015.03.16

• Google’s new Mountain View campus [Video]

  Google wants to build a new campus in Mountain View, California. Their objective is to create a space where “people, nature and ideas” can thrive. The architects on the project are Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick.

  Last week Google released a video talking about the ambitious project. It is a good watch and only 10 minutes. Click here if you can’t see the video below.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3v4rIG8kQA?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

  2015.03.08

• Urban Engines launches app

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ8ODREybcs?rel=0]

  About 9 months ago I wrote about a new startup called Urban Engines that was trying to improve urban mobility by using big data to optimize transit usage. 

  Last Tuesday the app launched in 10 cities across North America. So if you’re in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, or Washington D.C., you can go ahead and download it right now.

  The biggest “wow factor” is probably the augmented reality feature that allows you to hold your phone up and see transit information overlaid on top of the street in front of you.

  But more fundamentally, the real potential lies in the platform’s ability to collect data on the way people move in cities and on how transit lines are performing, so that it can be fed back to improve overall efficiency.

  That’s why the company is also working with cities to give them 24/7 analytics and reporting on how every bus, car, and train is performing in their networks.

  My hope is that with better data at our disposal, we’ll be able to elevate the discussions around transit and transit planning. Without great data, it’s too easy for these discussion to become political.

  2015.02.21

• What do you want to read about on Architect This City in 2015?

  

  Schönefeld by Vladimir Smirnov on 500px

  Though this blog is focused on cities and geared towards city builders, I cover a lot of different topics. 

  I talk about real estate, architecture, planning, transportation, technology, and even personal topics. My primary goal is to create a worldwide community of people passionate about building great cities, but at the same time it’s still a personal blog.

  Usually I just write about whatever is currently on my mind. I never queue up posts and so each post is written the day of. But sometimes I wonder if I’m delivering on what you, the readers, really want to read and talk about. 

  So today I thought I would simply ask: what would you like to see more of on ATC in 2015? Let me know in the comment section below and I’ll try my best to deliver.

  2015.02.20

• “Great ideas are Obvious in retrospect.”

  

  San Francisco Sunset by Nathan Camarillo on 500px

  The title of this post is a line from a Medium post that Biz Stone wrote back in August 2012. For those of you who might not know, Biz Stone is one of the cofounders of Twitter, as well as the cofounder of something called The Obvious Corporation.

  Obvious is a “company” that I’ve been following on and off for a number of years – I’m fascinated by the model and how it has evolved. It was founded back in 2006 by Biz Stone and Ev Williams (another Twitter cofounder) as a kind of “product lab” for new ideas. But since then it has gone through a number of iterations.

  Though I suspect that most people haven’t heard of Obvious, it was actually the parent company of Twitter before Twitter took off and became independent.

  But even more interesting is the fact that Twitter was actually a side project for a company called Odeo (a failed podcasting startup) that in turn was owned by Obvious. So specifically, Twitter started as a side project of one of the companies within a larger “product lab.” Nobody said innovation was straightforward.

  When Twitter eventually took off, their focus naturally shifted away from Obvious to it. They had a rocket ship of a company to build and run. 

  But in 2011, Ev and Biz, along with Jason Goldman (of Twitter), decided to “reboot Obvious.” The most notable outcome of this reboot has been the creation of writing platform Medium, which I believe still technically sits within Obvious. (Click here if you don’t know what Medium is.)

  Then in December of last year (2014), Ev Williams announced the third chapter of Obvious – now called Obvious Ventures – with this post called: It’s Obvious. Again. In short, they’re a venture capital firm with an approach that they call #worldpositive:

  We’re entrepreneurs. We’ve helped a lot of companies launch, grow, and generate great financial returns. A few of these companies also deliver positive social and environmental benefits with every dollar of revenue they earn. We want to fund and build more of those. That’s what we call #worldpositive venture capital.

  Already they’ve publicly announced investments in 10 companies, one of which I’ve written about before on Architect This City (Flux.io).

  I decided to tell this story today for 3 reasons.

  It shows you how non-linear innovation and careers can be. I love the idea of #worldpositive investing. And finally, because some of the startups that Obvious Ventures has invested in – such as Flux.io and Loup – are directly related to the future of cities.

  2015.02.19

• 21 largest venture capital investments in Canada

  The Globe and Mail published an interesting article this evening looking at the 21 largest venture capital investments in Canadian tech over the last 18 months. It’s called: Who needs Silicon Valley? Canadian startups scoring bigger deals.

  To put things into perspective, total venture dollars invested in Canada last year (2014) was around $1.9 billion. In the US, that number is estimated to be somewhere around $48 billion. So there’s a big spread here. But the Globe is arguing that there’s a shift towards medium-sized Canadian tech companies raising larger and larger rounds.

  Here are the top 21 largest venture capital investments made in Canada over the last 18 months:

  

  At the same time, there’s also an attitude change that seems to be taking place. Confidence is growing. Here’s a quote from Mike McDerment of Freshbooks from the same article:

  “Our goal is to be an anchor tenant in Toronto. At Freshbooks, we want to build a global company that really contributes in some meaningful way to the city,” Mr. McDerment said. He touts the local schools and talent pool and downplays the Valley’s head start.

  “The money is shameless – it’ll just go wherever. It wants the opportunities,” Mr. McDerment said. “I don’t see why Toronto can’t beat Silicon Valley.”

  All of this is important because the medium-sized companies of today will hopefully become the large-sized companies of tomorrow. And that’s what you need to build a thriving startup hub. You need big successes. You need those companies going public and generating wealth for their employees and communities.

  Thankfully, that seems to be where we’re headed. The first company on the list above – Shopify – is already preparing for a dual US-Canada IPO.

  2015.02.11

• How I moved over the last 3 weeks

  At the beginning of this year I wrote a post about a mobile tracking app called Moves that I had heard about through my friend Sachin Monga. He had just published a beautiful set maps showing where he physically spent his time in both Toronto and San Francisco.

  His post spurred me to download the app and at the end of my post I promised to share my own set of maps once I had collected enough data points. It’s only been about 3 weeks, but already my maps are starting to fill out, so I thought I would do a release.

  The orange lines represent transport of some sort (car, subway, streetcar, and so on) and the green lines represent walking. I don’t cycle very often in the winter (I know, I’m a fair-weather cyclist), so you won’t see any of those lines just yet. However if I posted a map from the summer, I know it would look completely different.

  Here’s a first one showing a regional scale:

  

  Here’s a second one showing the city of Toronto:

  

  And here’s a third one showing mostly downtown:

  

  What’s interesting about these maps is how much you can tell about me and the way I move around the city.

  For one, there’s a good chance I ski or snowboard given that I’m driving up to Collingwood, Ontario in the winter. You can also see how heavily dependent I am on the Yonge subway line, which is the thickest orange line in the middle of downtown. It’s also interesting to see how localized I am within my neighborhood (St. Lawrence Market). I walk to get groceries. I walk to the gym. I walk to coffee. And the list goes on.

  This is fairly typical for people living in urban neighborhoods, but it would be interesting to see where it applies in the city and where it begins to fall apart. I would also imagine that there’s a correlation to the area’s Walk Score, although this (Moves) might actually be a better measure since it’s usage data.

  Either way, imagine what cities could do if they had this sort of data for every resident. They would be able to see precise resident flows and then determine exactly where transit and infrastructure investments should be made instead of politicking to determine where they should be made.

  That time is coming.

  2015.01.24

• Marginal cost = 0

  Earlier this week I wrote a post called: The pull from services to products. And in it I made mention of the fact that part of what’s driving this pull towards products is that the marginal cost of servicing additional users or customers is almost nothing in a world of internet services and products.

  Well the reality is that this phenomenon is driving a hell of a lot more. It could – and probably will – fundamentally change almost all aspects of the economy.

  I know that sounds like a pretty audacious statement, but if you watch the following 10 minute talk by Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures) you might start to feel the same way. He outlines 5 changes being driven by the fact that in the digital world, marginal cost = 0. The impacts go well beyond tech, capturing sectors such as transportation and industrial real estate.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVEtTzlqsoE?rel=0]

  If you can’t see the video, click here.

  2015.01.24